


if we're fine (then we'll all be fine together)

by ziparumpazoo



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Babies, F/M, Family, Fluff, Force-ghosts, Future Fic, In-universe AU, Kidfic, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Post-TRoS, Prompt Fill, Technically Speaking, That's Not How The Force Works, Treat, but who makes up those rules anyhow?, everybody's back from the dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:21:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22709926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziparumpazoo/pseuds/ziparumpazoo
Summary: Leia’s not sure how those two managed it, and frankly, she does not want to even consider how her son and the young woman she’d come to think of as a surrogate daughter had gotten together in the middle of a war and conceived a child in the first place.for the prompt: Leia observes her son raising his own kid
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo
Comments: 24
Kudos: 117
Collections: For one is both and both are one in love: The Reylo Fanfiction Anthology's Valentine's Day Exchange





	if we're fine (then we'll all be fine together)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tmf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tmf/gifts).



> Dear tmf, some of these were epilogue snippets to a larger, unfinished work that would have likely remained that way. Until I saw your prompt and went "I wonder what that bit would be like from Leia's POV?". 48 hours later, I present you this. I haven't written this much in years, so thank you so much for the inspiration!
> 
> unbeta'd.

After her only child left to train at Luke’s temple, Leia dismissed any vague notions of ever being a grandmother. Jedi were not supposed to form personal attachments or let emotion cloud their judgement. Taking a partner or spouse was out of the question. It opened the Jedi up to too much vulnerability.

It’s one of the reasons Leia never completed her training. There were already so many people in her life that she loved too deeply to distance herself from them. But if Ben were able to find the much-needed peace within himself by following the Jedi teachings as Luke claimed, then Leia was willing to put aside those hopes of a stable, loving family that she’d held for her son.

Then war comes and she loses Ben to the other side, and she resigns herself to the fact that at least the tumultuous Skywalker legacy will be short lived.

So two things come as a surprise to her after she dies: one, despite her lack of formal training, she becomes 'One with the Force' and all that entails, non-corporeality and all. And two, her son becomes a father himself.

Leia’s not sure how those two managed it, and frankly, she does not want to even consider how her son and the young woman she’d come to think of as a surrogate daughter had gotten together in the middle of a war and conceived a child in the first place. Not when Leia knew for a fact that they’d been at opposite ends of the galaxy when it had happened. 

(she may not consider herself a Jedi, but she’s not entirely blind to the way the Force moves, even though those two seem to have been at the time)

But then again, considering the family history, it is not the strangest thing to have ever happened.

Ben doesn’t meet his son until the boy is nearly three months old, and Leia wishes she could somehow impart on him the memory she has of the boy being born and being welcomed into the tight bonds of the rag-tag family Rey had made for herself. It might have allayed some of his nerves at leaving his self-imposed exile and returning with Rey.

Appearing as a Force ghost takes a lot of energy that Leia is still learning to channel, but she hangs back as an indistinct consciousness, watching Ben’s white-knuckle grip on the armrests of the co-pilot’s seat and his less-than-furtive glances over at the sleeping baby wrapped against Rey’s body while she primes the ship for takeoff.

Ben throws himself into fatherhood like he’s making up for missing those first months of his son’s life, getting up with him at night and helping Rey out however he can. It warms Leia to see it, though at times she worries that he’s using it as an excuse to keep to avoid integrating back into a life outside of his First Order conditioning. He spends long hours just holding the boy or watching him sleep.

“He’s doing fine, really,” Rey tells Leia in passing. “They’re just getting to know each other.”

If Force ghosts could startle, Leia would have. She’d been certain neither of them had known she was there. It had never been her intention to intrude, but it was hard not to linger and watch her son when she had missed him for so long.

“He hasn't said if he's noticed you, but I don’t mind having you around.”

Leia catches a flash of wobbly uncertainty from Rey, the subtle fear that without anybody to guide her, she’s figuring this motherhood thing out all wrong. Leia pushes a little more energy into being tangible and lays a hand on Rey’s arm. “You’re both doing just fine.”

When Ben finally decides it’s time to get back to living, Rey hands him the baby and promises him that Poe won’t shoot him if he takes Josh with him. 

Leia's in for a surprise when she follows them to her old quarters. Poe has taken over the space now as an office, though her desk is now pushed back against the wall and there’s a low table with a mismatched assortment of chairs around it. It’s less formal and more fitting for brainstorming or planning sessions, which seem to take up the bulk of Poe’s time now. Leia can’t help the surge of pride in seeing him grown up from that hot-shot pilot and one-time mutineer from only a couple of years back. Responsibility suits him, as she always knew it would.

“If you keep fighting the remains of the First Order, you’re only going to fail.”

Poe tenses, and it takes everything in Leia’s power to stop herself from smacking Ben across the back of his head. Subtlety has never been her son’s strong suit - it was a good thing he’d never been interested in politics. Leia braces, waiting for the expected explosion from Poe.

Except it doesn’t happen.

Poe’s jaw tenses, then he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. It brings him eye-level with the baby.

Between the two men, Josh is standing on Ben’s thighs and blowing spit bubbles, a skill he’s only recently discovered. Ben holds his hands to steady him as he wobbles and bounces. Poe smiles and Josh grins back, oblivious to the tension his presence is diffusing.

Poe sits back and slouches in his chair. “Explain.”

Leia laughs to herself at how quickly Rey had figured out Poe’s weak spot: droids and babies. She’s not sure how she hadn’t noticed what a keen strategist her daughter is.

“You are aware of the methods the First Order uses to subjugate planets?”

“Trade blockades leading to starvation, exploiting natural resources, people… yeah, we’ve seen it all,” Poe replies. “Basically, terrorism. It’s like fighting a million little fires.”

Ben wipes one drool covered hand on his pants and adjusts Josh so the baby is sitting on his lap. Josh tries to shove Ben’s other hand in his mouth. “So what if you stop fighting every little fire and give the people the tools to do it themselves?”

“Weapons?” Poe asks as he reaches for something on the desk - a small wooden toy, which he hands to Josh. Josh turns it over in his hands, examining it, and then promptly loses interest in chewing on Ben’s hand in favour of chewing on the toy.

Ben seems surprised, but only for a moment until he realizes that Josh probably left the toy here the last time Rey had brought him along. It's a reminder of the breadth of the boy's extended family. “Uh, thanks. No, not weapons. Education. Skills. Break their dependence on the current trade federations.” He goes on to explain the broad strokes of his idea while Poe takes note.

Leia recognizes some of her old arguments made a lifetime ago on the floor of the senate. It seems there’s a bit of politician in Ben after all.

A flu virus sweeps through the compound, nothing terribly complex or dangerous, but the wide open spaces and dry desert air of Jakku had always been inhospitable to a lot of things, flu viruses included. Having missed the opportunity for natural exposure and immunity, Rey gets hit with it. Hard.

It happens right around the time that Josh starts teething.

Leia wishes more than ever that she could become fully corporeal right then, if only so she could sweep in and take over. She watches helplessly as Ben juggles trying to convince a stubborn and feverish Rey to go rest and a fussy baby who wants only his mother for comfort. He walks the floor with Josh for hours before the boy finally succumbs to exhaustion and falls into an uneasy sleep against Ben’s chest. Unwilling to risk disturbing him by putting him down, Ben sprawls in the nearest chair with his arms wrapped around his son and falls asleep himself.

Leia can’t help but reach out to brush the hair that had fallen over his forehead, like she used to do when he was a small boy. She can feel the heat radiating from him - the virus has taken advantage of his exhaustion and caught hold on him now too. A little push is all it takes, a little bit of healing energy transferred into him, and his fever breaks. It’s not much, but it’s the only thing Leia can do to help him right now. 

It’s a far cry from the angry, conflicted man her son had once been, one who would have given up and stormed out instead of putting his own misery aside for the two most important people in his life. 

As she leans down to kiss his brow, Ben’s eyes open and Leia knows he can see her. He blinks sleepily up at her. “Hey mom.”

She cups his cheek, and then kisses Josh as well. “Get some rest Ben.”

The boy seems to have inherited the climbing gene from his mother. And, Leia decides as she settles herself on the shipping crate next to the precocious toddler, possibly her complete lack of fear or good judgement when it comes to personal safety. Leia can’t do much to convince him to climb down, and he’s probably safer staying put, but Leia cannot turn her back on her grandson while his parents are unaware of the trouble he’s gotten himself into.

Which, given that either one of them alone is powerful enough to sense a mouse half a kilometer away, takes all of about eight seconds.

Ben rushes into the hangar at a sprint. 

The stack of crates isn’t high, maybe just past Ben’s shoulders, but a fall from that height would be far enough to seriously hurt a child, Force sensitive, or not.

“How’d you get up there Josh?” Ben calls softly, trying not to startle him.

Of course Josh ignores him. He’s found some stray part, a metal washer which Leia can see clutched in his small hand, and he’s busy trying to fit it on to the end of his finger.

“Josh.” Ben repeats, voice getting firmer. It would be simple enough for him to reach out and float Josh down, but two-year-olds don’t seem to take kindly to being manhandled via the Force. Last week Rey had grabbed him as he was about to fall off the dock and into the lake. She'd reached out on instinct and frozen him in place even as she’d lunged for him. It had taken ages to calm him down, and almost twice as long to convince Rey she was not a terrible parent for scaring him.

Josh continues to ignore Ben. He’s being particularly sullen, though Leia can’t sense any specific reason. Ben went through a phase like at this age too. She remembers it driving Han nuts because he could never predict which version of Ben they’d see from one day to the next. Leia herself had wondered at the time how parents not gifted with any sort of Force sensitivity managed to raise children at all.

Coming at it from the other side of experience, Leia decides that Josh is being mercurial simply because he can.

Ben has not yet learned to see it that way. This isn't the first incident with Josh lately, and Ben has never overflowed with patience. His tone sharpens. “Yeshua.”

Using his given name finally gets his attention. Josh looks up from his bit of metal. “Ben-yah-min!” he shouts back, poking a finger at Ben’s face for emphasis.

Leia tries not to laugh. This child is both the best parts of his parents, and the worst of them, depending on the hour.

There is a familiar flicker in the Force around Ben. Leia recognizes his mood shift. But then he takes a deep breath, and it’s gone. “Josh,” he says quietly, “you need to come down. You’re up too high.”

Josh tries on a sulk, but it’s half-hearted.

“You can keep what you found,” Ben tells him as he holds out his arms. “But you need to come down so you can show your mom. She’ll want to see.”

At the mention of his mother, Josh is won over. He lets Ben lift him down, his outrage from a few minutes ago forgotten.

It’s a tiny moment, one that could have gone either way between them, but Ben had made a choice he wouldn’t have been able to before Josh came along. Leia couldn’t be more proud of the father her son has become.

Leia regrets that she cannot spend all her time with them. She misses out on so much, so many moments and milestones. Being able to manifest as a Force ghost is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Except maybe today.

She’s standing knee-deep in the water with Rey, which is as far as the former desert child is comfortable going on her own. Which is fine, because they’re really just watching Ben and Josh play.

Josh turned three today and so they'd taken a picnic to the beach. Ben is teaching Josh how to put his face in the water, but Josh keeps forgetting to close his mouth. He comes up sputtering and spitting, but he’s laughing, and so is Ben. The sound is a balm to Leia’s heart. If she can’t be here in person, it helps to know at least that they’re happy.

She turns to the woman beside her, the one she can happily blame for this. Rey’s watching her boys with an amused smile on her face. It’s a look Leia’s familiar with from the back in the early days when she’d catch Rey on the fringes of a celebratory crowd, just watching like she’s merely a spectator to something so amazing, and not the heart of it.

Leia nods to her arms wrapped around her waist. To anybody else, Rey probably looks like she’s chilled standing in the water, but being the wise non-corporeal being that she is, Leia knows better.

“Have you told him yet?”

Rey shakes her head. “No, but-” she pauses until Josh’s head breaks the surface again, this time with less water in his mouth. “I think Ben knows. I think he senses it already.” She turns to look at Leia. “Is it weird that I’m nervous about doing this all over again?”

Leia wraps her arm around Rey and watches her son and her grandson for as long as the Force will let her be here with them. “No, it's not weird at all. But you guys will be fine.”


End file.
